I love autumn in the Pacific Northwest. Most years summer will linger long after Labor Day through September. It’s usually in October before the westerlies begin to show up and we can expect a few storms. Yet often we still enjoy foggy mornings that burn off into mild days with clear blue skies by afternoon. As the day’s become shorter it’s time to ‘layer up’ as we say, but we can still feel the sun’s warmth on our faces.
In the Puget Sound region we live in a convergence zone. The Olympic Peninsula, home of the Olympic Mountains, protects most of the greater Seattle area from winter’s direct westerlies. Our weather normally circles in around the Olympics, either from the southwest, or from the northwest.
Most years we don’t see frost on the pumpkin until Halloween. Yet come November, that’s when the dance between the rainy gray and the cold and clear begins. The Pineapple Express is the very wet and warm weather originating near Hawaii that heads our way like a river anywhere from October through January.
I’m no meteorologist to be sure, but I find it fascinating the dance between weather in the South Pacific and way up north in the Arctic defines the weather patterns we’ll have here in the Puget Sound area.
Downtown Renton November 10, 2011. It's a beautiful sunny autumn day.
November is typically the beginning of the ‘long gray’. Cloudy, rainy, and blustery with mild temperatures in the low 50’s. Typically right around Thanksgiving the cold arctic air wants a turn on the dance floor and the jet stream pulls this cold air mass down over Alaska through British Columbia. This equates to freezing temperatures with clear days in December and January. But if the two decide it’s time to meet and embrace, we get snow when they converge.
These dances can be a wild. In January of 2005 (and again in 2010) the Pineapple Express pelted Southern California. In 2006 south central Alaska had massive rainstorms, and in Washington we had so much rain and snow melt in the Cascade mountains we had to open regional dams to 100%.
Driving to the office November 11, 2011 and it's raining, windy, and the
leaves are blowing every which way.
Unusual so far north was the major storm in the Bering Sea last week. Hurricane force winds, record high seas, with rain and snow that blasted Nome and the coastal villages along Alaska’s coast. My hat is off to Alaska's Amateur Radio Emergency Service. This network ARES of amateur Ham Radio operators kept communications going between villages on the coast and fed vital information to the National Weather Service. Way to go!
If you follow Scott Johnson of Nome, Alaska ~ @akscojo on twitter ~ or his conversation #akstorm, he kept a constant stream of observation and info going during the storm. Nice going Scott and friends.
I’m hoping the Farmer’s Almanac is right. It looks like it will be wet here in the Puget Sound but the winter should be mild with some snow predicted late December to Februrary.
Pineapple Express Farmer's Almanac Ham Radio Vital Link Scott Johnson
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